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Business somewhat as usual is Raiffeisen Research reaction to Ukranian election outcome

By: Raiffeisen Research | 29 Oct 2012

Raiffeisen Research, part of the Austrian group specialising in CEE investments, believes the results of the latest parliamentary election in Ukraine point to business as usual, especially given the still muted reaction of international markets.

According to the partial results and exit polls, the ruling Party of Regions came in first place in the parliamentary elections under party-list voting.

At the moment, the Central Election Commission has counted 63.2% of the ballots and the ruling Party of Regions (President Yanukovych) leads with 34% of the votes, followed by the main opposition party Batkivschina (imprisoned former Prime-Minister Tymoshenko and Mr. Yatsenyuk) with 22.6%. The Communist Party, the long-standing ally of the Party of Regions, got 14.7% of the votes. Two other opposition parties – Udar, headed by famous boxing champion Vitaliy Klitschko, and right-wing Svoboda – will join the Parliament as well, getting 13% and 8.8% of the votes at the moment. The results of the other parties, including the newly-formed Ukraine-Forward! party and the Our Ukraine party of former President Viktor Yushchenko, are well below the minimum threshold of 5%.

The preliminary results will be delivered by the Central Election Commission on 31 October, while the official final results are due on 12 November.

Six exit polls were conducted on election day, and according to the most reliable ones, the pro-president parties (Party of Regions and the Communist Party) got 40-42% of the votes under party-list voting. The combined results of the three opposition forces (Batkivschina, Udar and Svoboda) totalled somewhere in the range of 49-51%. Thus, based on the exit polls, the opposition is set to get 120-125 seats (out of 225) in the new Parliament under party-list voting.

At the same time, the exit polls and partial (preliminary) results put the ruling party in a comfortable lead in single-seat constituencies, where another 225 parliamentarians are elected. Thus, the pro-president parties are widely expected to achieve a simple majority (more than half the seats) in the new Parliament.

OSCE election watchers on Monday already criticized “the lack of a level playing field” in their preliminary conclusions, also saying that “certain aspects of the pre-election period constituted a step backwards compared with recent national elections”. This suggests that the extent of voting irregularities has been larger than during the previous parliamentary election campaigns in 2006 and 2007. But the final verdict will very much depend on the extent to which the official results diverge from the exit polls and the situation in single-seat constituencies, where there is growing evidence of manipulation in certain districts.